Death as a Gift

Today was my son Sean’s belly button birthday. He was born December 14, 1977 around 9:40 am. I say around because I remember very vividly the events of that happy occasion. This is a story I never thought of writing about. Maybe this is the kind of tale that would be told to the grand kids. I’m not sure. I do know that yesterday Pastor John preached a wonderful sermon and towards the end he talked about a conversation between a mother and son regarding the young mans struggles with health. He told his Mom that maybe his diabetes was a gift from God. How beautiful, that this young man would be able to look at his affliction, a life changing illness, from Our Heavenly Father’s perspective.

I had never thought of my son’s death as a gift. I knew it was something huge that was given to me to endure, that was all. Unless you have personally experienced the loss of a child you will not be able to relate to this. As I write this, I pray my thoughts, words and heart pours forth from the Holy Spirit within and will not be anything of myself. Still, a broken hearted mother who misses her son each and every day. He was 23 years young when he died. But first let me tell you of his birth.

I was living with my parents at the time and still covered under their insurance until the end of the year. I remember my Mom mentioning we should hope the baby is born before the end of the year. I had no idea what I was having, boy or girl. I was hoping for a boy, to put it mildly. At nine months pregnant I was out shoveling snow and doing other things hoping to speed up the process. I had gained a lot of weight. People were always encouraging pregnant women to eat back then. “You’re eating for two, have some more!” Praise God we don’t do that to women anymore. It was hard for those of us who already struggled with understanding the concepts of moderation, size does matter and less is better.

The father of the baby was living with his mother at the time. He had been in a terrible motorcycle accident over the summer and was in a cast from his waist down. One leg was busted up pretty bad. We were not together when this happened and I guess recovering from surgery and the accident gave him a change of heart regarding the possibility of fatherhood. He was 24 and I was 19. The evening of December 13th I was over his Mom’s visiting. I began having pains that night once I was back home and the pains grew and became more frequent. I let my Mom know when she got home from work and we called and spoke to a nurse timing them and decided I should come in. It was a foggy night on the way to Oakwood hospital and my Mom was very nervous and anxious to get us there both safely and quickly. I had decided on natural childbirth but didn’t take any classes. I simply knew I didn’t want to be drugged up or given any of the others things I had heard about.

No need to go into great detail about all this. Eventually my water broke and I was in about 6 hours of hard labor. I felt my Mom was not following through with getting Mark down there so asked the nurse to please intervene and make sure he had been called and was on his way down. When I was moved to the delivery room the doctor stepped out for a minute to check on another delivery and while he was out the baby was born. A boy and I was overjoyed. My Mom was in the delivery room with me, Mark I assume was in the waiting room because I did see him later. I remember someone saying note the time and so that’s why I mention about. It was 9:40 give or take a minute or two. Years later Sean asked me what time he was born because he wanted to have his chart done. I shared this part of the story with him and he seemed to enjoy hearing it and said as long as it was within five minutes, it was good to know.

Mark and I had not agreed on a name. I wanted to name him Deidrick but he hated the name. The day I was to be released from the hospital, and they kept you there three days back then, someone came around with a form on a clip board. I was told I could not be released until I gave them a name so they could finish the paperwork. We had finally decided on Sean Michael and had previously signed the paternity papers stating that Mark Tomes was indeed the father.

Something else Pastor John shared in the sermon really struck my heart. And made me smile because I could totally relate to it. When we would arrive at family gatherings, everyone would be calling out to Sean and we were pretty much ignored for the first few minutes. But that’s to be expected and we were happy to watch everyone shower him with love. I am crying as I write this just thinking about the love I saw in our families for my son. He was and is dearly loved and missed by many.

Both his father and I like to write. Mark wrote poetry mainly whereas I have a poet’s heart and have written some over the years but I enjoy writing stories much more. Sean had a heart of gold. He had been tapping into his gift of writing. At 23 he had so many stories to tell from life lessons he had already lived through. Sean wrote poetry and I have one of his notebooks. Mark was fond of saying he grew up on the streets of hard knocks, and so had I. Our son however had been through more than us and in half the time. Life happens to us all. We go through things and we live and learn. Moving on and looking ahead is the key. Looking back and holding on to things in the past gets us no where. It simply keeps us prisoners, bound and chained, of no use to anyone, least of all our selves.

I was living with a friend at my sister Carolyn’s house. We rented two bedrooms. One was our bedroom and the other his office, our study. Sean wanted to move back to Tahoe and he moved into the study on a temporary basis. He got a job shortly afterward and soon after that found two potential roommates. Two young ladies and he was stoked. He was to move out May first. We spent about a month together and I thank God for this time with him. He had turned us onto this game, Age of the Empires, and we’d hang out in the study. We would go out on the deck and talk while we smoked a cigarette. Both of us had asthma but we both smoked. I treasure these talks. One day he talked about the wreckage he left behind back in Detroit. I could tell he was thinking of going back and trying to clean that up. I told him rather bluntly that if he went back to Detroit he would not get out of there alive. People wanted him dead and we both knew it.

Easter weekend my family got together in the City. I am very grateful for this. God is so Awesome. As a family we got together for two wonderful meals. Breakfast at Kate’s Kitchen and the Cliff House for brunch Easter Sunday. After the brunch we all went to a park in the City and fed the ducks, hung out and took pictures. It was a wonderful time, the entire weekend. At one point Sean was resting on a picnic table and you could say he looked dead to the world, laid out, so to speak. He and his friend Martin had partied hard while they were there. He still drank and smoked pot but was off the hard drugs. I was grateful for that.

I will not go into the details of his death. I wrote about that in detail previously. I will just say this. When he got his first paycheck he wanted to go out and buy a few drinks for a few friends. They went to Lakeside Casino. At one point during the night he popped in and gave me some money. Some he had borrowed from me and other money towards his rent with his new roommates that he wanted me to hang on to for him. He mentioned he wasn’t feeling too good so I told him to join us for dinner, pizza night and just stay in. But he decided to go back out. That morning he woke me up about 3:00 am, he was having an asthma attack. It was April 28th. He was dead within a half an hour.

I will not say much about what I went through after this. I will tell you about some of the things that went through my heart and mind. I was very angry with God for taking him and not me. I had been suicidal a number of times and would have welcomed death. God carried me through this time. At one point a phrase played over and over in my head. “It’s gonna be OK.” That was God, although I didn’t know it at the time. I didn’t know the Lord then, just His name.

You’ve probably seen the email about some people come into your life for a season, for a reason. It’s possible, the man I was with at the time, that was his reason. Because once again, I wanted to die. But I thought about him finding me dead and after what we had been through, watching Sean die, well I just couldn’t do that to him.

When I wrote in detail about his death I titled it, “The worst thing that ever happened to me.” I thought about things like, what could be worse than this. These are a couple of things I came up with. Not knowing what has happened to your child. If they are alive or dead. Watching them be tortured or harmed and not being able to do anything for them, to help in any way. These are the kinds of thoughts I would have regarding my son’s death.

I was arrested for a DUI and got clean and sober in February of 2006. The DUI was my rock bottom but I was brought to my knees on June 17th of that same year. I decided then that my son’s death was not the worst thing that ever happened to me. It was the most heart breaking experience, to be sure. The worst thing was to be without hope, to want to die because I felt I had no other option. Jeremiah 29:11 says: For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” I don’t know what the Lord’s plans are for me. I try to live one day at a time and not look back at painful things in my past. I am forgiven. I am saved by the blood of Christ who died on the cross for all of us sinners. I still sin, every day. I am far from perfect and I never will be. It’s not even a goal. My only goal in this life is to serve the Lord, to love Him with all my heart, mind, soul and strength.

I close this with prayer. I pray that you have the Lord in your life. If you do not, I pray you will turn to Him for comfort in your hour of need. And we all get to that place in our lives. He is standing right there knocking on your heart waiting for you to open the door. That is all it takes. Just let Him in. He does not go where he is not welcome. Welcome Him. Let His Love and Peace Embrace You. I pray this in Jesus Christ Our Savior’s Holy, Precious name. Amen